Chapter 1 - THE WATER WAS ALREADY FALLING
The bucket was already tipping when John Blackwood looked up.
He had barely made it three steps onto the stone patio, the smashed unicorn birthday cake still lying beside the sliding door where he had dropped it, when icy water came crashing from the balcony stairs.
John turned his whole body around his daughter.
The water struck his shoulders and ran down the back of his gray hoodie.
Lily made a weak sound against his chest.
She was five years old that day.
Her pink pajamas were too thin for the wet March afternoon, and her skin felt frighteningly hot beneath them.
Sarah stood four steps above the patio holding the empty yellow bucket.
“Take that sick little burden somewhere else,” she snapped. “My real child comes first.”
For a second John only looked at her.
Not because he was shocked by Sarah being cruel.
Sarah had spent two years calling him a broke veteran who “played mechanic in the garage” while his wife supposedly paid for everything.
John usually let it pass.
He had learned in the Army that insecure people often became louder when nobody challenged them.
This was different.
Lily was shivering.
John had returned to their Fayetteville home almost four hours earlier than expected because a field test outside Wilmington had been canceled after rain.
He had stopped for the unicorn cake Lily had been asking for since Christmas.
He expected balloons.
Instead he found his daughter alone beneath the uncovered section of the patio, barefoot, feverish and crying too weakly to knock on the locked sliding door.
“Aunt Sarah said I make Mason sick,” Lily whispered.
Mason was Sarah’s six-year-old son.
John moved Lily beneath the covered portion of the patio and settled her into the chair.
He peeled off his wet hoodie and wrapped it around her.
Sarah came down the remaining stairs.
“She was coughing all over the house.”
“You locked her outside?”
“I separated her from my son.”
“She’s five.”
“She knows how doors work.”
John stared at her.
Sarah reached his level.
“You weren’t even supposed to be home.”
That sentence lodged somewhere in his mind.
Before he could ask what she meant, Sarah grabbed the front of his wet shirt.
“You come marching in here acting like some hero because you bought a cake?”
She shoved him backward.
His shoulder struck the patio railing.
John planted his feet.
Sarah gave a small laugh.
“What are you going to do, broke veteran? Fix me with a wrench?”
John removed her hand from his shirt.
Not violently.
Not gently either.
He stepped between Sarah and Lily.
“Stay away from my daughter.”
Sarah lunged toward his pocket when she saw him reach inside.
John knocked her hand away and pulled out the rugged satellite handset he carried during emergency field operations.
“You picked the wrong child to throw away.”
Sarah grabbed his forearm.
John pressed the emergency key.
The line connected almost immediately.
“Colonel Blackwood, Command Center. Your emergency code is verified.”
Sarah’s expression changed.
John gave Lily’s condition and his home address.
The operator began confirming that county EMS and the company’s on-call safety coordinator had been contacted.
Sarah suddenly tried to snatch the phone.
John caught her wrist.
“Sir,” the operator continued, “the personnel you requested are already—”
Sarah reached desperately for the disconnect button.
John pulled the phone away.
Her face had gone pale.
And John finally understood something he should have noticed sooner.
Sarah wasn’t afraid of soldiers coming to the house.
She was afraid of anyone official seeing how Lily had been treated.
“Why are you panicking?” he asked.
Sarah stopped struggling.
From the patio chair came Lily’s quiet voice.
“Daddy?”
John turned.
Lily was watching Sarah.
“She said if anybody found out, she’d lose Mason again.”
John looked slowly back at his sister-in-law.
May you like
Again.
That was the word that changed the afternoon.
